The first note of the hymn rose like incense, sweet and solemn, filling the church rafters. My husband’s casket lay at the front, draped in lilies, the wood polished to a shine that caught every flicker of candlelight. The choir’s voices swelled, their harmony lifting for him—for his memory. But as I sat there, hands clenched white around my crumpled tissue, I realized no one had sung for me. Not once did their voices turn toward the woman left behind.
I had always imagined grief would come with silence—the stillness of an empty house, the quiet ache of a missing laugh. But this? This was noise. A wall of sound that wrapped itself around his life, celebrating every kindness he’d ever given, every smile, every scripture he’d quoted on Sunday mornings. And me? I was just a silhouette in black at the edge of the story. His widow, not his partner.
Backstory pressed against me like a tide. Mark and I had built our marriage on hymns and promises, every Sunday in this very church. He sang tenor in the choir for seventeen years, his voice always a little flat but filled with such joy that no one dared correct him. I had sat beside him, week after week, my hand brushing his as we turned the pages of the hymnal together. When he got sick, it was me who held the bucket, me who learned to decipher the medical jargon, me who prayed over him at 2 a.m. when no choir voices were there to lift him.
Yet in death, he was theirs. Not mine.
The build-up began in whispers. Mrs. Jennings leaned over my shoulder at the viewing and said, “He was such a man of God. We’ll miss him so much,” as though she were the widow. One of the altos cried into her handkerchief louder than I had cried in the entire week leading up to the funeral. When the pastor asked the choir to prepare “Mark’s song”—his favorite hymn—they burst into it with such ferocity that my chest ached. The congregation clapped along softly. And I sat in silence, my grief swallowed whole.
I had requested one thing. Just one. That they sing “Be Still My Soul” for me, at the close of the service. It was the hymn Mark and I had shared after losing our first child, the hymn that had carried us through every storm. But when the time came, Pastor Raymond nodded to the choir director, and instead they launched into another of Mark’s favorites. The final note soared high, triumphant, while I sat hollow in the pew, my request unheard, my loss invisible.
The climax came at the graveside. The choir had followed, their voices rising once more as the casket was lowered into the earth. “For Mark,” the director said, smiling through tears. I stared at her, my throat raw. My knees threatened to buckle, the cold wind stinging my face. Finally, I couldn’t bear it.
“Enough,” I said, my voice cracking but loud enough to halt the hymn. Heads turned. The choir froze, mouths half-open. “You’ve sung for him all morning. But who sings for the woman he left behind?”
A stunned silence fell. The earth smelled of turned soil, damp and heavy. I felt every eye on me, some pitying, some disapproving. My son shifted uncomfortably beside me, squeezing my hand. The choir director’s eyes softened, but she said nothing. No one did.
The resolution came quietly, later that night, when I stood in our bedroom surrounded by Mark’s shirts, his aftershave still lingering in the air. I realized I didn’t need their voices. I could sing for myself. Softly, I began: “Be still, my soul…” The melody wavered, broken, but it was mine. Mine for him, mine for me, mine for the years that belonged to us and no one else.
Final Thought
That day taught me something bitter and true: communities grieve the person they knew, but they rarely grieve for the person left behind. Choirs sing for the dead, but widows must learn to sing for themselves. And in my shaky voice, alone in the dark, I found the only hymn that mattered—one that belonged to us, not them.
